X.Y–preN or X.Y–preN–C–gXXXXXXX — there has been no release candidate for version X.Y yet

X.Y.RCN–C–gXXXXXXX — there have been N release candidates to date for version X.Y and there have been C commits since the latest (N-th) candidate

Any other result from the Gitdescribe command indicates that the release process has not been followed properly; consult a senior developer. In particular, a result of X.Y.RCN without the –C–gXXXXXXX suffix indicates that there have been no changes since the last release candidate, so a new candidate is not needed.

Tag the release candidate

Tag the HEAD of the release branch as the N-th release candidate (the following example uses N=3) and do not push to GitHub: